A woman should submit to her husband

[Guest]

What fascinates me about the Adam and Eve story is that it took the highly intelligent Satan to tempt and convince Eve, but only a woman to tempt and convince the man.

[CatherineM]

As I often say, Eve hadn’t been created when Adam made his covenant with God. She wasn’t a party to the original contract. I could have gotten her off with a lesser penalty at the very least. 

[linate]

the bible says men are to love her woman the way God loves his church, or something like that... so does that mean you could say the woman's obligation to submit only is required when the man fulfills his side of the obligation?

[havok579257]

On 10/24/2017 at 6:19 PM, linate said:

the bible says men are to love her woman the way God loves his church, or something like that... so does that mean you could say the woman's obligation to submit only is required when the man fulfills his side of the obligation?

a woman's role of obligation is not dependent on a man fulfilling his role.  if a husband or wife does not fulfill their obligation to the other it does not mean the offended spouse gets out of their obligations.

 

women are called to be submit to their husbands.  men are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church.  Christ did everything for the church and even gave his life his flock.  he sacrificed himself for the love of his flock.  husbands should love their wives like Christ did the church and that means be willing to sacrifice their life for their wives.  their is no greater love a person can have for another when they willingly sacrifice themselves for another.  a husband is called to love his wife like this.

[Era Might]

41 minutes ago, havok579257 said:

a woman's role of obligation is not dependent on a man fulfilling his role.  if a husband or wife does not fulfill their obligation to the other it does not mean the offended spouse gets out of their obligations.

 

women are called to be submit to their husbands.  men are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church.  Christ did everything for the church and even gave his life his flock.  he sacrificed himself for the love of his flock.  husbands should love their wives like Christ did the church and that means be willing to sacrifice their life for their wives.  their is no greater love a person can have for another when they willingly sacrifice themselves for another.  a husband is called to love his wife like this.

I think this idea of "Christ loving the church" gets reduced to an abstract, archetypal, symbolic Christ. We imagine Christ as "Christ," as a role, a symbol who dies for his people, the supreme symbol of sacrifice. But Christ as a real human being had a much more complicated love for the church (the disciples), and it often involved elevating women above men (such as when he disarmed the crowd who wanted to stone the woman taken in adultery, the supreme example of a "disobedient wife"). And the women who encountered Christ were often willful, like the woman who insisted on eating the scraps from his table like a dog, or Mary herself, who insisted on his turning water into wine.

I always say I believe in women more than men. Put a woman in a situation where she has to take care of her kids by herself, she gets it done. Put a man in the same situation...not saying there aren't men who get it done, but I'd bet on a woman over a man any day. Authority is a mark of formal power, which is always inferior to actual power. The president has formal power, but the people have actual power. Same with men.

But, everyone's different. There are men and women who just get along. I see a guy and his girlfriend walking their dogs every day, very nice and mild people, they seem like they get along well. Some men and women are more gendered, hierarchical. Whatever works. I don't think, in the real world, people sit around pondering whether who submits to whom. These things usually work themselves out...but religious types like to overthink things.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Era Might

[havok579257]

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

I think this idea of "Christ loving the church" gets reduced to an abstract, archetypal, symbolic Christ. We imagine Christ as "Christ," as a role, a symbol who dies for his people, the supreme symbol of sacrifice. But Christ as a real human being had a much more complicated love for the church (the disciples), and it often involved elevating women above men (such as when he disarmed the crowd who wanted to stone the woman taken in adultery, the supreme example of a "disobedient wife"). And the women who encountered Christ were often willful, like the woman who insisted on eating the scraps from his table like a dog, or Mary herself, who insisted on his turning water into wine.

I always say I believe in women more than men. Put a woman in a situation where she has to take care of her kids by herself, she gets it done. Put a man in the same situation...not saying there aren't men who get it done, but I'd bet on a woman over a man any day. Authority is a mark of formal power, which is always inferior to actual power. The president has formal power, but the people have actual power. Same with men.

But, everyone's different. There are men and women who just get along. I see a guy and his girlfriend walking their dogs every day, very nice and mild people, they seem like they get along well. Some men and women are more gendered, hierarchical. Whatever works. I don't think, in the real world, people sit around pondering whether who submits to whom. These things usually work themselves out...but religious types like to overthink things.

your comment about women getting things done for children and men not getting it done would be the same if I said if a childs safety was involved from an outside threat a man could and would save the childs life and the women wouldn't even attempt let alone accomplish it.  Do you agree with this similar statement because if not, it just seems like an attack on men not being able to provide for their children?

[Era Might]

27 minutes ago, havok579257 said:

your comment about women getting things done for children and men not getting it done would be the same if I said if a childs safety was involved from an outside threat a man could and would save the childs life and the women wouldn't even attempt let alone accomplish it.  Do you agree with this similar statement because if not, it just seems like an attack on men not being able to provide for their children?

I wasn't referring to everyday things like picking up the groceries, but the fundamental power that each holds. Of course, men can provide for their families, but I think men are inferior to women, or rather, fatherhood is inferior to motherhood. Not for any specific thing they do, but because the head is always inferior to the heart. The essence of fatherhood is to prepare a child to take their place in the world, in a specific, temporal world. The essence of motherhood is eternal, beyond success or failure in the world. A failure of fatherhood is disappointment. A failure of motherhood is pain and grief.

Don't know if you've ever read "The Grapes of Wrath," but there's a nice example in there. As the Joad family has to leave Oklahoma and migrate to California, Pa Joad gradually loses his authority, he loses his ability to be the strength of the family. He kind of passes it on to Tom, his eldest son, but the real power is in Ma Joad. The story ends with the image of the family hunkered down during a storm, and a man is dying, and the daughter in the family has to breastfeed a grown man to keep him alive.

The reason a man, culturally, can go out and be an "authority" is because he leaves the more important matters, the heart, at home. In the kingdom, the last are first and the first are last. I don't believe that the Gospel is about equality but about radical inequality. Not about power but love. That's why men are inferior to women, and deep down, if they have any perspective on life, they know it. Men live in a world of appearances and roles, and they depend on women to give them a place of reality to return to, a place that is real, not the fake world of male power.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Era Might

[little2add]

4 hours ago, Era Might said:

I think men are inferior to women,

[Papist]

[linate]

you have to have some sort of "reasonable submission" standard, otherwise you will have people like poster who submitted unequivacally to her abusive husband. i know it's not in the bible that it should be tit for tat, the woman submits as long as the man is loving, but for the sake of making it 'reasonable', maybe that's one way to look at it. 

[Era Might]

I wonder what was the context that St. Paul was writing. It's not like he lived in a modern context where women were independent. It was still a very patriarchical, hierarchical society. And I doubt he was writing about petty domestic matters. I'm guessing he had in mind, at least partly, women who wanted to be Christians and husbands who had other interests. Or maybe a Christian husband and wife who didn't see religion eye-to-eye. Maybe his point was about unity, just as he wrote about unity in the church, which wasn't about authority but about keeping the bond of Christ, which can break very easily over even the smallest things, like St. Peter refusing to eat with Gentiles.

[Jack4]

On 10/28/2017 at 3:02 AM, Era Might said:

I'm guessing he had in mind, at least partly, women who wanted to be Christians and husbands who had other interests.

No, an authority cannot bindingly command sin.

______

What should be the centre of the thread is the interpretation of the verse by the Magisterium:

Quote

 

26. Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that "order of love," as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church."[29]

27. This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.

28. Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and everywhere be maintained intact .

29. With great wisdom Our predecessor Leo XIII, of happy memory, in the Encyclical on Christian marriage which We have already mentioned, speaking of this order to be maintained between man and wife, teaches: "The man is the ruler of the family, and the head of the woman; but because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, let her be subject and obedient to the man, not as a servant but as a companion, so that nothing be lacking of honor or of dignity in the obedience which she pays. Let divine charity be the constant guide of their mutual relations, both in him who rules and in her who obeys, since each bears the image, the one of Christ, the other of the Church."

 

-CC

[Era Might]

4 hours ago, Jack4 said:

No, an authority cannot bindingly command sin.

That's fine in a theoretical world, but relationships are a lot more complicated than that, in the early church and in every other age. What does a Christian woman do who was married to a soldier, for example, or married to a pagan. St. Paul addresses these kinds of cases in the New Testament, but they're just one or two examples of how complicated things get. 

Another interesting aspect of this is that Christ explicitly said he came to set mother against father, husband against wife, child against parent. To be a disciple is to introduce disorder, disruption into the normal course of human relationships and society. The real scandal of a female disciple is that she has direct, personal access to God independent of her husband. That's a real danger and threat to a man's authority. It was also a big problem with prophets and martyrs in the early church, they held direct, personal power that was not mediated through an institutional hierarchy or sacraments, which was a problem for the authority of bishops.

I'm guessing this is why the New Testament speaks of whole houses getting baptized...if the man of the house converted, so did all his family and servants even. But, the history of Christianity is full of "difficult women," like St. Joan of Arc who didn't toe the theoretical line.

[tinytherese]

I remember this being discussed multiple times on here over the years. In the end, husband and wife are equal in dignity. The husband doesn't domineer his wife and treat her like a slave to his own selfish whims. If he orders her to do something which is contrary to the Gospel and her dignity, she isn't required to submit to him. 

He is supposed to objectively make decisions on what is best for THE WHOLE FAMILY, loving them as Jesus loves us. 

On a lighter note, this reminds me of a quote from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

"The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants."

[Jack4]

On 11/1/2017 at 12:26 AM, Era Might said:

It was also a big problem with prophets and martyrs in the early church, they held direct, personal power that was not mediated through an institutional hierarchy or sacraments, which was a problem for the authority of bishops.

Acts 2:42

On 11/1/2017 at 12:26 AM, Era Might said:

St. Paul addresses these kinds of cases in the New Testament, but they're just one or two examples of how complicated things get.

....and yet the same saint says in extremely clear terms that the wife should submit to her husband. The interpretation of the Church, I've quoted above.

On 11/1/2017 at 12:26 AM, Era Might said:

The real scandal of a female disciple is that she has direct, personal access to God independent of her husband. That's a real danger and threat to a man's authority.

 

Indeed, a woman can have a "personal relationship" with God by things necessarily including:

- faith that all Scripture is inspired

-Sacraments, some of which cannot be celebrate by woman. 

On 11/1/2017 at 12:26 AM, Era Might said:

But, the history of Christianity is full of "difficult women," like St. Joan of Arc who didn't toe the theoretical line.

In fact, St Joan is someone who knew that there is legitimate and illegitimate use of authority.

On 11/1/2017 at 12:26 AM, Era Might said:

That's fine in a theoretical world, but

As Saint Andrew of Crete observes, the law itself "was enlivened by grace and made to serve it in a harmonious and fruitful combination. Each element preserved its characteristics without change or confusion. In a divine manner, he turned what could be burdensome and tyrannical into what is easy to bear and a source of freedom".